Oh look, with the threat of a big enough fine, you can uninstall those things.
Or at least hide the front ends for them.
Linux gives all global users more control: Uninstall Windows, say goodbye to Microsoft
I would love to, but we stiill use Windows specific software (and sometimes even Dos specific software!) but we already do that through a VM. The other issue is the extensions we have for Microsoft Office just won’t work on the Linux alternatives and even then Libreoffice isn’t good enough for half the staff in my accounting firm because it lacks certain features for now.
Most companies who work in browser based software + email can easily switch to Linux and they would barely notice it.
even then Libreoffice isn’t good enough for half the staff in my accounting firm because it lacks certain features for now.
The worst part is where some functionality breaks in a document bigger than a holiday card. I mean formulae vanishing.
I think OOO around year 2009 was very stable and without such annoying bugs. But I haven’t tested it there TBH.
Seriously, feature parity is a dead end. If there were a cross-platform office suite that would at least support the absolutely necessary things with a format not much more complex than org-mode, big documents (300 pages without degrading performance) and UTF-8, it would be fine. I think. That format can even be XML-based, just … why would you have vanishing objects in a document past their certain number? Do they have an unsigned byte counter somewhere?
I would love to, but we stiill use Windows specific software
If I had 1 cent every time I read that… and I pulled those cents together… and then paid software developers to build that missing software for other OSes like Linux… then we’d gradually see less of those comments.
It’s as if the isolation was the business model, proprietary software insuring that alternatives do not exist because users do not bother to get together and unstuck themselves from glowingly dangerous (security wise but probably even financially dependencies.
Hopefully initiatives like NLNet are precisely trying to alleviate such challenges. Until them compatibility layers like Proton are showing the way with arguably some of the most complex and demanding in terms of performance software, namely games.
If I had 1 cent every time I read that… and I pulled those cents together… and then paid software developers to build that missing software for other OSes like Linux… then we’d gradually see less of those comments.
There is a version of the software that works in the browser, but it’s not really that great. That’s what you get when you legally need to use specific software (even the Dutch tax office still use the same old version we use). There are other alternatives, but it’s a massive investment of time to test and switch to that. Something we are forced to do in the near future, but it’s gonna take a lot of time inclusing a lot of time of people with hourly rates of over the 200 EUR excluding VAT. I estimate it will cost us maybe 50% of our yearly revenue to fully switch an organisation to Linux and we will loose a lot of people working here where there are a lot of issues with finding new people for accounting firms.
I have been trying to install Microsoft Office in Linux mint on my personal PC cause I have more issues with LibreOffice when using MSOffice files (and the people receiving the files will be using MSOffice as well) than I have with games. I tried it using Bottles (Wine) with multiple different installers, but no luck so far.
Not sure what NLNet is going to do about software lol, I believe you mean something different. NLNet is an instance that is there for people living with lymphedema and/or lipedema and their loved ones.
Because laws were made by incompetent and malicious people.
Laws should mandate protocols and formats, not implementations. Protocols and formats mandated by the law should be simple. The whole humanity was just fine transmitting telegrams by Morse code consisting of letter groups. Then it was just fine with fax. If what we absolutely require to stay productive needs to be so astronomically complex that one programmer, given ready libraries for XML, encodings, compression etc, can’t write a fully functional and usable by everyone editor for that in 1 month - then such a protocol or format is not good enough to be mandated by law.
Blame the US for that, they are generally the country that goes most against international countries, things like ISO codes for dates, accounting standards, but also things like the way they make invoices etc.
The ISO standards are generally made to make it easier to communicate with each other and here in Europe we also have some really good things going with the VAT rulings and later on with the invoice exchange protocol that is mandatory in Belgium from 2026 onwards.
I also think that beliving that “laws where made by incompetent and malicious people” is a glass half empty way of looking against it and as somebody who has a decent amount of hours learning national and international laws (mostly about taxes) I understand that a lot of them where just made in a different time and people abusing the system cause “quick” fixes to be applied instead of rewriting the enitre relevant law.
Not sure what NLNet is going to do about software lol, I believe you mean something different.
That NLNet https://nlnet.nl/ funding FLOSS project.
There are also BlueHats in France showing how administration is using AND consequently funding FLOSS https://code.gouv.fr/en/bluehats/ by paying for sysadmin, feature dev, maintenance, etc.
I’d love to at work, but I’m using some win-only software with a f-ed up licence manager that I cannot stuff into a VM.
Now switch package managers and run all your drives on different obscure file systems! Make every login cycle through plasma gnome an unhinged custom DE and raw terminal where a camera with sign language recognition is the only valid input!
Create a script to revert to systemd every third startup!
Which distro hurt you?
Arch, obviously, but it was all arranged before hand. After care was lacking. Forgot to load that though, so it’s kind of my fault.
Sounds like half of the process your average Windows debloater goes through every time they update?
On like 8, maybe, sure.
You’re doing something wrong, maybe ask someone knowledgeable for help with your system. It doesn’t happen to other people.
doesn’t happen to other people
Because they’re fucking cowards.
Yeah, you need to be really brave to setup your system incorrectly.
‘incorrectly’
That word absolutely reeks of being no fun.
What, may i ask, is the correct way to configure and use my computer?
The one where you aren’t frustrated by the usage of it.
Oh, so there’s only one of those?
Edit: I read further down…Arch is a bit of a motherfucker. Sorry.
Sorry for what? This was consensual.
For slagging you pre-edit
To get pedantic for a second. The title of this post is “Microsoft gives…” as if this was an altruistic act that Microsoft decided to do for some people, when the article states they did it to comply with a law.
A much better title would have been “EU Forces Microsoft to Give Users More Control:” It returns the credit to the people who deserve the credit and clarifies that it wasn’t something Microsoft did willingly.
Not pedantic. The specificity, imo, is extremely important here, and the poor phrasing really bothered me, too.
In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it’s newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. But only in some countries! It’s pathetic.
Tbh everything listed is how 10 LTSC came by default for all users.
10 ltsc?
Windows 10 long term servicing channel. It’s intended for things like electronic signs but works great if you just want un bloated windows. It comes with most of the random bullshit not installed and has a longer period of security updates.
In addition to what Hangon said, some copies of LTSC 10 still have support until 2027 unlike other Windows 10 versions.
If you wanted to try it out on a spare device without buying then ye’d be digging yerself a massgrave wink.
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Europeans have the Freedom to Uninstall SPYWARE? LoL COMMIES here in America we have TRUE FREEDOM of being FORCE FED SPYWARE with NO Other options!
the other option is a faster, more privacy focused, free, open source operating system.
I made the switch a little over a year ago, I know not everybody can/wants to - but major distros are honestly polished enough these days that I haven’t looked back, I should have switched to Linux years ago.
Not everyone will agree, but I think Ubuntu + installing apps through Flatpak is a winning option.
Imagine living somewhere where those in charge have even there smallest bit of spine.
mmm, that was nice. can i have another?
The best control: uninstall Windows.
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Huh, well ill continue living without all that shit on Linux Mint.
Mint… more than just a delicious herb!
🇪🇺the🇪🇺land🇪🇺of🇪🇺the🇪🇺free🇪🇺
Microsoft is grudgingly forced to give…*
Uninstalling the store would be the biggest feature. A lot of telemetry is tied to it. I tried some of the “debloaters” out there, but the windows Installation breaks after a couple of months (I assume when ms pushes a new major update).
For those curious, if you can get a European Windows product key, you can install the “N” version of Windows. Be warned, it only works with certain product keys…
The standard Windows installer should give the option of “Windows 10” or “Windows 10 N” (or similar). The N version is basically bloatware free out of the box…
The regular version has a bunch of promos pre-installed, like candy crush, and other things that most people couldn’t give a shit about…
Recently I’ve been playing a “fun” game with my work laptop where I’ll remove copilot, and a few days later it will appear again. Weeee. In that case, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a policy in place to enable copilot on my works systems… I’m sure someone who works here, probably higher up the food chain than me, wants it enabled, and the ham fisted policy maker can’t create a policy just for those who want it, so everyone gets it because the bosses son Shane decided that he wants to see how much of his work can get done by AI so he can do even less while on the clock.
Companies absolutely HATE copilot. I remember they didn’t even like Siri enabled on the Mac’s where I used to work. No way in hell copilot is getting a pass.
I work for a fairly large company, and we’re hearing about “AI” constantly. CoPilot is available and its use encouraged. Also, in the cybersecurity space, AI is fucking everywhere. Vendors won’t shut up about their “AI Enabled” products. And the new hotness is “Agentic AI”, which is basically automation, but we’re going to let AI hallucinations fire off the automated process which could bring production systems down.
Good times are surely coming. /sDon’t underestimate management desire to be absolutely indistinguishable from their competition.
They read the Harvard Business Review, learn new terms they don’t understanding, make a PowerPoint out of it and voila, they are “innovative” like everyone else.
If HBR put “AI” on its cover you can be damn sure all those innovators are going to put AI wherever they can.
Heh, it’s a small business and bossman isn’t exactly anti-AI.
N editions should exclude just certain media features. I remember it trying in Win 7 days and never touched it again, never saw a point. Some additional info. Important bit is to not use Home edition, use Pro, Education or Enterprise instead.
As for Copilot, is there anything under these registry keys?
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
Neither of those keys exist.
Probably because I keep uninstalling the software.
If those keys do not exist, then there is no policy configured to either force enable or disable Copilot.
Perhaps sometime in the future, more people will try Linux and see how good it is. My recommendation based on my own experience:
Want stable, just working. Robust workhorse: Try Debian
Want newest, nicest, good for gaming (need a tiny bit of tinkering if you run Nvidia): Try Fedora
Want easy to install, but a bit older and slower, but requires no tinkering: Try PopOS
Don’t like settings, tweaks and fuzz: choose Gnome desktop 😊
I’m sad to say I had to drop Linux for a while because I run Nvidia. I heard that AMD is fine, and that Nvidia is baaaadically fine with a few issues still so I gave it a shot. But games just genuinely run noticeably worse with an Nvidia card. Games would lose 20-30 frames. Maybe not a big deal with my setup if I was using a 60hz monitor since most were still above 60, but I’m using 144hz.
It sucks too because it’s not fedora or Linux as a whole’s fault. It’s Nvidia’s.
Thought about keeping it but already had a few things I needed to dual boot windows for. If I still need windows for gaming, basically that leaves idly browsing the web as fedora’s main use. And I think that’s a bit overkill.
Looking forward to eventually getting an AMD card (Legit if you’re reading this and thinking about upgrading or building a new PC and think there even a small chance you’d go with Linux in the future, go AMD) or even just a whole new build. That way I can just delegate my current machine for those few tasks I need windows for, and have a main machine for general use.
The relatively bad linux experience, plus all the news about nvidia being the scum of the earth, is what made me go with a solid AMD card instead.
Same for me, sorta. I have to dualboot Windows and Linux because I just can’t seem to fix the jankiness of my gaming experience on the latter. I wanna make a full AMD build but I not really a good idea to splurge in this economy.
My gaming rig was the first thing to go full Linux because I was sick of dealing with windows for a HTPC and wanted bazzite for the steam gaming mode. Not had any issues yet.
I did wait till I got a an AMD card though. But my GF uses a 3050 for bazzite desktop and she’s had no issues yet either. She had lots of issues with the 1050Ti she had before then though.
I know its not everybody’s cup of tea, but plain standard Ubuntu these days has a lot of polish and interoperability. The addition of gnome tweaks, extensions, and flatpak have left me not wanting much extra customisation.
This is after being on a dozen other distros and finding ironically they can be less customisable unless I want to spend an entire in terminal.
My whole system is AMD so switching to Linux was a breeze. A few days ago I installed Fedora KDE Plasma because I genuinely enjoyed the look and feel of Windows, but I wanted it without the Microsoft part. And I have to say, no regrets. I’m getting everything done without the BS, and all my games work just fine. It did need some very weird tinkering to set it up properly, and I made ChatGPT work overtime to feed me answers. Nobody would have to put in the amount of effort I did though, and if it wasn’t for my niche problems, everything would have been handled without a hitch. The terminal still scares me but I’ve learned several tricks.
Xubuntu is stable, lightweight, easy to install, and requires no tinkering. No idea about gaming, but I’d choose it over Debian and PopOS at any given time.
And again; repeat after me: install Linux already. Just get it over with, demand Linux work stations at work,use Linux for yourself and for the first time ever experience freedom on your computer
I feel like this is one of those calls that get so repeatedly people get numbed.
Something along the lines of climate change, economic crisis, etc.
They are all true, but people are passivated.
For real though; GET THE DAMN LINUX. SPIN IT UP IN A VM. TRY THE LIVE VERSION. DUAL BOOT IT WITH WINDOWS. YOU LOSE NOTHING, WINDOWS IS STILL THERE. JUST TRY IT FOR ONCE.
It is painful to see people struggle with things that are easily solved.
I ripped the bandaid off a month or so ago. Went with LMDE. Haven’t looked back. Steam runs all my games through Proton just as good as they ran on Windows, if not better.
2,5 years in, not looking back.
To be fair, some multiplayer titles (Fortnite, Valorant, recently Apex Legends, Splitgate 2) do not work due to anticheat being very Windows-specific, but other than that, I have not encountered any issues.
Currently playing World of Warcraft, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Minecraft, Gunfire Reborn, Endless Space 2, recently played Split Fiction, Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, TES V Skyrim, Elite Dangerous, Warframe, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Cycle Frontier, Once Human, a bit of Star Citizen - each and every one of them played perfectly well.
I haven’t noticed issues in any singleplayer/co-op/MMO games I’ve tried. For multiplayer shooters, it gets worse. All Valve games are alright (of course), and some others are too. Apex Legends is a biggest loss, they’ve recently decided to arbitrarily drop all Linux support, despite working flawlessly in the past.
Good to know about those.
My laptop has been running LMDE for the past year, so I was able to get the hang of it as a daily driver (been using Debian for years for servers).
Used Debian, Manjaro, Mint (regular Ubuntu version), Fedora as a daily driver on PC; Debian, Ubuntu and a bit of Arch on servers.
Currently running Fedora. Debian is good, but I appreciate being closer to the bleeding edge, and while Flatpaks help bridge the gap, they also make more up-to-date distros remain stable, and you wouldn’t use Flatpaks for system packages which also matter.
Previously ran Manjaro - nice premise, but the team does not have the capacity to pull it off just stable and good enough. It does tend to break after a while. I still wish their team all the best and hope it will one day become my home again - but not before they sort their mess.
Arch on desktops is too much of a “debloated” experience for me - I don’t enjoy having to build my system from scratch, even though I know how. Also, the risk of updates borking the system is too high, and I’m not red-eyed enough to read all update notes. On experimental servers with just a few packages, though, it can be useful.
Mint was actually quite buggy for me too, despite folks generally insisting on stability as one of its selling points. Also, they are strong on promoting Cinnamon, and I’m a KDE fanboy (and a bit of a Gnome enjoyer).
Fedora caused me problems only once, and that is when I used universal Linux package to install proprietary NVidia drivers (use the package from Fedora repos to avoid my mistakes!). Other than that, and through several major updates, it works like a charm. It also automatically saves system images while updating, and you can easily load any. Stability-wise, it was same as Debian to me.
Currently running Fedora. Debian is good, but I appreciate being closer to the bleeding edge, and while Flatpaks help bridge the gap, they also make more up-to-date distros remain stable, and you wouldn’t use Flatpaks for system packages which also matter.
That’s absolutely valid. I’m the opposite, in that I’ll add something from
backportsorunstableif I wanna try something more “fresh”. I’ve got a few flatpaks on my Debian desktop systems; not a fan of their sheer size, but I guess having all the dependencies bundled together is kinda the point… I equate Debian to a new Toyota, where the tech might be “outdated” compared to other brands (shipping a 6-speed auto when everyone else is shipping 8/9-speed autos, for example), but they ship it that way because the tech has a proven track record and won’t break at inopportune moments, waiting to “update” when the next gen/version is more mature.Previously ran Manjaro - nice premise, but the team does not have the capacity to pull it off just stable and good enough. It does tend to break after a while. I still wish their team all the best and hope it will one day become my home again - but not before they sort their mess.
I hold similar view points. It looks good… Needs more team members though. Maybe I’ll throw it in a VM.
Arch on desktops is too much of a “debloated” experience for me - I don’t enjoy having to build my system from scratch, even though I know how. Also, the risk of updates borking the system is too high, and I’m not red-eyed enough to read all update notes. On experimental servers with just a few packages, though, it can be useful.
Yeah… I’ve got 5 kids, ain’t nobody got time in my house for fixing something that shouldn’t have broken 😂
Mint was actually quite buggy for me too, despite folks generally insisting on stability as one of its selling points. Also, they are strong on promoting Cinnamon, and I’m a KDE fanboy (and a bit of a Gnome enjoyer).
Ah, see, I used LMDE, not the Ubuntu-based one. I don’t like the way Canonical is going, but I really like Cinnamon, and having a rock-solid Debian base with some Mint goodies on top was more than enough to get me to switch on both my personal laptop (Thinkpad T14 G1 AMD) and my gaming PC (custom build, 5800X3D/7900XTX). I considered Bazzite for a hot minute, but I’m much more familiar with Debian than Fedora (again, used Debian for years on servers, and was the first distro I actually installed on my own hardware when I first discovered Linux), plus there’s a literal mountain range of documentation, forum posts, tips, and tricks for Debian. Not saying there isn’t for Fedora, but I just know how to find info for Debian better than other distros.
Fedora caused me problems only once, and that is when I used universal Linux package to install proprietary NVidia drivers (use the package from Fedora repos to avoid my mistakes!). Other than that, and through several major updates, it works like a charm. It also automatically saves system images while updating, and you can easily load any. Stability-wise, it was same as Debian to me.
Nice. I like Fedora, very clean, but the constant updates drove me nuts. I used Fedora on an older laptop for a while, but I found that I was running updates more often than just…using it.
Going Debian is fully valid too! And more generally, whatever distro works for you is the best. There’s a good reason there are so many.
Damn, 5 kids…you’re a hero lol
Fedora sure is mature as well, but Bazzite in particular is immutable, which adds a level of complexity you may not be ready for. Debian can be used as a gaming distro, at least for as long as you’re not using the latest and greatest hardware.
Constant updates are pretty much a feature of all distros close to the bleeding edge. That’s what makes them bleeding edge to begin with. With Debian, you’ll be forgiven to forget updates even exist.
I lose Virtual Desktop for my wireless VR, 3ds Max and Solidworks for CAM. If all I did was gaming, media and browsing, I’d switch. Which is why my HTPC, only used for couch gaming and media, is running Bazzite.
I mean, you lose nothing for trying. Windows will still be on your machine if you dual boot or use live image.
Some use cases may force the user to stay with Windows. Most won’t.
